


Living Up To Expectations

by shewhoguards



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: AU, Gen, kidnapped by fairies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-08-27 00:54:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8381545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewhoguards/pseuds/shewhoguards
Summary: Perhaps there were worse things that could happen to a baby than the Labyrinth. It was questionable though whether there were worse things that could happen to the Labyrinth than a baby.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Piscaria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piscaria/gifts).



Perception worked differently in the Labyrinth. A ten month old baby had no understanding of cruelty or fear, and so to Toby Jareth was neither cruel nor fearsome. The baby expected to be loved, because almost everyone in his short life had loved him, and so it was. Amongst goblins and magic, to anticipate the thing was to make it so and therefore it was natural that he become a pampered pet, waited on by a horde of goblins eager to fulfil his slightest whim. There was no fear that he should tumble down endless steps should he slip, nor ever a chance that he should fall to the ground after being thrown in the air. Always there was a goblin there; tolerating endless finger pokes and pulls of his ears.

Perhaps there were worse things that could happen to a baby than the Labyrinth. It was questionable though whether there were worse things that could happen to the Labyrinth than a baby. As Toby grew he expected Jareth to be his defender against the world, as all children expect of their parental figures. He was still only a child; he neither saw or understood the excesses of cruelty that his expectation produced from the Goblin King. Word spread quickly that causing the young Goblin Prince even the mildest offence would be punished with extreme prejudice. Of course, as parents everywhere can attest, it is very easy to cause toddlers offence and so it was that a young boy’s howl quickly became a fearsome thing, a thing to be avoided at all costs.

And so Toby grew; spoiled, cosseted and above all, _slowly_. Time works differently when magic is involved and it may have been fifty years or five hundred before he reached his adolescence. If one imagines the surliness and entitlement of a normal teenager, and then multiplies that up appropriately to imagine a teenager who has had five centuries to learn that the world must run to obey his slightest whisper then you may understand the young adult that Jareth produced. Most teenagers only imagined that the world revolved around their expectations but for Toby it was no more than the literal truth.

It was not enough. It could never be enough to prevent the child, who had once been a pet, growing up frustrated and increasingly angry. It had been a fine thing when he was small to know that he had only to wish for a thing and it would be brought to him, but as he grew he wanted more. He wanted to create the world for himself, to model it as Jareth modelled it and share in that power. And that power, Toby knew, he would never share.

And because he knew it, of course, Jareth never could, and Toby’s anger turned him into the enemy he had never been. The boy felt him unfair; and so unfair he was. He insisted that Jareth was forbidding merely for the sake of being forbidding, and his insistence made it so. His adolescent resentment made Jareth colder, more powerful and even taller than he had ever been and the Labyrinth seethed uneasily under the master its young prince created for it. Even goblins went into hiding when the pair argued, seeing what Toby never did, that the Goblin King changed noticeably in the course of each disagreement.

And then one day, inevitably, a tantrum went too far and Toby, unconscious of the effect of his words, screamed those that could not be undone.

“You can’t tell me what to do!” he shouted with all the force young lungs could muster. _“You have no power over me!”_

Careless words, childish words, words spoken in anger alone. Toby, brought up amongst goblins, had no idea what harm they could cause. But words have power, and it makes no difference if they are not meant. Jareth reached for him, as though to stop the words escaping or to haul him back, but he was already too, too late.

Toby could only watch in horror as the only world he could remember faded and was lost to him forever.

 


End file.
